


Glitter In The Dark

by WaldosAkimbo



Category: Blade Runner (Movies), Good Omens (TV)
Genre: F/M, Guns, M/M, Other, Replicants (Blade Runner), Tags May Change, retiring replicants
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:33:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27822322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WaldosAkimbo/pseuds/WaldosAkimbo
Summary: A group of rogue replicants led by the new Nexus Prince Line has headed back to Earth to try and find a way to lengthen their lifespans from the standard 5 years given to them by the Morningstar Corp. Blade Runners Gabriel and Aziraphale are set to take them out.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Beelzebub/Gabriel (Good Omens), Hastur/Ligur (Good Omens)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 6





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Oh lord, oh no, not another Blade Runner AU story, give it a rest, Waldos!
> 
> Never!

“Can I smoke?”

“Do you?”

Eric’s hands remain flat on the table, his eyes slowly roaming the corners of the room cast in dusty blues. Feather-sewn lashes brush his cheeks every blink. One has to wonder why anyone from waste management needs prosthetic lashes. Kids these days and their fashion statements. The stalk of hair, two of them that are reminiscent of old bunny-ear antennae. The rough knit scarf. The gloves. All of them are classics, like Converse sneakers and convertibles.

“Do you?” Eric repeats back to the auditor and licks behind his teeth, swallowing down what might even be considered worry. Almost genuine. Will need to see what the test has to say about that.

“Try to relax.”

“Is this a test?”

Abel struggles to get the little tripod to open up and bites his lip in concentration until one of the legs finally snaps into place. He would not be pressed to admit he wishes he _did_ have a cigarette then, but neglected to bring any with him to this investigation. Not professional. Something like that.

“I get nervous during tests,” Eric reiterates, since Abel still hasn’t acknowledged him. “I had my IQ test two weeks prior,” he says, hoping to be helpful, and his face perks up with that hope. “Is it like that?”

“Just about.”

The mechanism makes a little _clunk_ and whirs inside the chassis. For all it is, it looks just like a video camera. A tad bulky, sure, given what they have in their stores now, but only because it is so, so much more than a camera.

“Can you look here for me?” Abel tapped just below the aperture, an orange light blinking until Eric looks long enough for the scan to complete, capturing a full render of his eye. Wherever he looks now, the machine will keep a steady scan on it. Such is the miracle of the Voigt-Kampf. “Perfect. Calibration done.”

“Is that part of the test?”

Abel smiles at the table. There’s a file out, freshly fetched from his briefcase. Bit ridiculous, carrying a briefcase, but Abel likes the weight of the thing and hefts it around on these interviews for the simple tactile pleasure of it. Could he pull up the records on his phone? Sure. He could also project said records above his phone’s screen, flicking through the hologram easily. But where’s the fun of taking out his pen, licking the nib, and checking off each neat box next to the questions while the machine records? While the subject answers?

Plus, he gets overtime re-recording his answers into the system later. Win-win.

“2121 Korlinger.”

“Oh. That’s my flat.”

“Pardon?”

“Where I live?” Eric asks, confused by Abel’s own confusion. “That’s the address.”

“Oh?” Abel scratches out a single line and makes a notation.

“Nice enough,” Eric says and drums his fingers on the table before he pulls them back, making them disappear into his lap. “I won’t be there forever, I think. I just got this job. Hoping, y’know, to stay with it a bit? I think that will really—”

“I’m going to ask you a few questions.” Abel rests the nib of his pen against the paper. There is a dot of black ink in a square, a preemptive decision to the answer before it is given.

“You are?”

Eric watches him, his expression still the same. Innocent. Easy to mistake for misinformed or downright unintelligent. Someone might assume it is the perfect face for someone who has joined the lower ranks of waste management. Vital work, no doubt, but not exactly brainy. Abel’s assumptions need to be set aside, but it’s only human. That’s the problem.

“So, this the test?” Eric asks.

“This is the test,” Abel repeats to the paper, scanning through the questions. Form 12145 this time. He has the questions memorized, but it’s a comfort to read them off the sheet all the same. He sits back, double-checks box one, and finally says, “I want you to tell me about your mother.”

“My mother?”

Abel opens his mouth to go to the next diagnostic question, scribbling _irritated_ next to the first, when he hears a small crack and his stomach blooms, first white hot, then red, the force of nothing shoving him back in his chair hard enough that he falls to his back and cracks his head on the cement floor.

Eric stands. There is the smoke of a 21 Malbok pistol at his hip, quickly concealed in his long coat. He strains up on his tip toes to look over at Abel and the pool of blood behind his skull. It looks almost black in the blue smoke of the room. Bad ventilation. Crypt-like, under Management’s processing facility. Slim windows with thick bars…escape will be tricky. But only if he runs. Eric tugs on the ratty wool scarf around his neck, a paltry warm against the nuclear winter outside.

“That’s what I think of my mother,” Eric says calmly. There is no dilation from his eye. No flush of his cheeks. The twitch of a smile, yes, but that might just be the victory of escaping his interview with his life. Which he has yet to accomplish, really, but that’s only semantics. He scrubs the side of his gloves across the table to smudge his fingerprints, despite it all, and climbs with surprisingly fluid grace up to one of the windows, breaking the grate. The heady roar of the city breaks through after the pane bursts around his gloved fist, adverts for off-world tickets blaring, adverts for anti-depressants blaring, adverts for the Morningstar Corporation blaring. And, listening to the guttural growl of speeding hovercards, Eric yanks his lithe body up and through the frame, dropping onto a transport two stories down, and zipping away into the bleak air.

The machine on the table beeps. The tone sounds sad, requesting attention, and then shuts off with disuse while the investigator bleeds out underneath the table, a splash of red on the paper next to his black ink spot. Preemptive answer. Final answer.

**O**

THERE WAS A TIME the city was parched for rain, dying in the dust. Now, the rain never seems to stop. It’s as ever present as the moon in the sky. Presumably. So hard to see the actual sky these days. But, with the rain meant the smog wasn’t so thick. Small mercies.

Aziraphale sits back to let the rain coat his face, smiling up at the dark heavens, the eternal twilight smothering him back down to earth. He has done well to stay hidden under an awning, but a lovely young couple are seeking shelter and Aziraphale gives up his seat, crowding an arm like a wing over his plasti-wrap plate and hurried over to a tall table under some tarpaulin sheeting. He’s scanned some of his last credits for a helping of synthetic apple pie, fresh off Eve’s automat. The last piece off the shelf by the looks of it, too. The smell is almost right as he digs his spork into the brittle crust.

There’s a familiar presence behind him. Aziraphale makes certain to finish the bite before he turns around to face him.

“Would you like some?”

“Why do you eat…that?” Gabriel furrows his brows together, pointing at the grey mush coming out of the pie. Aziraphale has done his best not to look at it, to save himself and his appetite. So much for hope. Spite, on the other hand, can fuel a man and anyone has the ability to take that away from him as far as anyone can throw him, and he has done well to build himself into someone who is far from throwable.

Aziraphale raises his metal spork just an inch before he slides it into his mouth and grins.

“It’s good!”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” says Gabriel. He fills the space beside Azirapahle, resting an arm on the high tabletop. “We’re pulling you back in.”

“Beg your pardon?” Aziraphale has manners, at least, and bows his head to hide his mouth behind his hand, chewing too quick, swallowing too soon, and nearly chokes. “Back… _why_? Did something happen.”

“You’d need to take that up with the Metatron.”

Cheeky nickname for the chief of the department.

“On what protocol?”

True, Aziraphale is desperate for work. He used to be quite proficient at his job, really, and was even stationed at one of the premier transport launch sites, guarding the eastern gate against replicants trying to jump ship. He was very good at retiring those who did not have authorization, but one grows tired of sanctioned murder and, to be true, he ended up giving away a regulation department weapon to a young woman, desperate and out of luck. He never did get a chance to scan her or her companion to see if they were replicants. It all had felt so wrong. It felt…so right to help them out. The rain…on her face…. Perhaps tears.

He wasn’t exactly discharged, either. But had been taken off assignments and basically told to wait for so long, now, he was certain they had fired him and forgotten to say. The paychecks still came, so he made no complaints and did what he needed to continue his day-to-day.

But now?

Gabriel slides his eyes back over to Aziraphale, an unspoken accusation. It is impossible these days to tell whether the peculiar coloration of his eyes is a personal cosmetic choice or an accident from the near crippling radiation that is threatening to destroy the world. Nobody gets superpowers. They get cancer and they die, but anomalies are not unheard of.

They really did need a ticket to the colonies, for sheer survival purposes. But Ark Enterprises made them so expensive. There is word that, at least on Earth, it’s getting slightly better. Adverse effects scrubbed out, generally speaking, but it’s still bloody awful to go out in the public sectors, especially Lower G.

Either way, Gabriel has the most peculiar purple eyes. Has had them as long as Aziraphale knew him, actually. Aziraphale is still mesmerized by them, though he has worked out a way to avoid looking too stunned by keeping his eyes down. Pie. Plate. Metal spork.

“How many?” Aziraphale finally asks, keeping his voice light and cheery as he lowers his spork to the half-eaten pie, appetite summarily ruined.

“Five. As far as we can tell.” Gabriel pushes himself back up and tugs on the heavily lined lapels of his jacket. He keeps a high collar, no doubt to protect his face and immaculate hair from the weather. “But you’ll have to see the files. I heard there’s even a Nexus 6. Prince line.”

“Prince?”

“Come on.”

“But I haven’t finished my pie,” he says, though he has no desire to do so. That grey mush…yuck. But it is simply the principle of the thing!

Gabriel glances around quickly and spots someone crouched next ot a trash receptacle. “Starving people in gutters?”

Aziraphale glances too and sighs, his shoulders drooping. Not because he is out a few creds and half a treat, but at the sorry state of the poor thing squatting by the trash. He holds up a finger to Gabriel and trots over quickly, kneeling, offering his tray.

“Here you are.”

The young boy looks up with soot-streaked tracks down his face. There is that obvious ring of green around his eyes. He hasn’t been scrubbed in weeks, if Aziraphale hazards a guess. Must not have long for this world. He chomps the tip of his tongue between his teeth in tired frustration and struggles with his pocket a moment before he pulls out a small brass disc and puts it in the boy’s hand, saying nothing about it. One St. Sebastian Token might get him another day, but he’ll be clean and there is promise of protein gelatin in his future with it. Or he could pawn it off and do as he likes.

The rain continues. Heaver, even, as it sloughs off Aziraphale’s cream-colored overcoat when he returns to Gabriel’s side.

“A token? Really?”

“I had a spare,” Aziraphale answers, to which Gabriel shrugs, dismissive, and waves them over towards the car.

**O**


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beelzebub and crew need to figure out how to extend their lives. Somehow.

Beelz scrapes their thumb across the side of their tongue, ignoring the metallic grit that’s stained their skin. It’s almost like blood. Foolish, really, to give them blood, but then they know what it tastes like. They know what it tastes like from themselves. From others. How it splashes hot when one must drive their thumbs into the eye sockets of their enemy.

They sniff, too, mere habit than necessity, scrunching up their nose, marred by a caustic burn that splashed in an uneven ‘x’ across their face. Another thing held, the pain of it remembered, but easy to push back in the present.

Then they count out the thin sheets of paper, placing the transparent documents onto their knee after each is accounted for. Beelz is perched up on a container. Metal. It’s freezing their ass, but everything is freezing, and they didn’t flinch with the caustic burn. Why should they flinch now?

“Sixty…seventy….three-eighty-three.” Beelz shakes their head and folds the pieces. Old money used to trade in underground circles, since only the reputable use chipped payments anymore. “It’s not enough.”

“I can’t go back to that job,” Eric says and holds up the pistol. Beelz shakes their head again and Eric pockets it. His double leans against the alley wall, keeping look-out for them, and chews on his thumbnail.

As Beelzebub tucks their paltry money into their jacket and ruffles the collar higher to cover their neck, they notice the temperature is starting to drop. Another storm coming to replace the last and wet this city once more. It’s a wonder everything hasn’t drowned, but then all those dams that line the city must be good for something.

“I have an idea,” Beelz says. They thumb their scarred nose, pointing at a wavery advert flickering, distorted, over a bun vendor across the street. The familiar open hands, silhouette of wings, marks one of the engineering depots for Morningstar Corp. Twin columns of smoke rise from grates near the building like a colosseum of metal and ash and despair, crushed by the rest of the city built up atop it.

The depot is small, most of the real-estate diverted to storing the merchandise that will be sent to Morningstar Corp for the next crop. It lines the walls in compact silver crates, each one tagged and identified, ranging from parts for the military class all the way down to simple companions. The rest is heavy equipment, branching into smaller and more elegant parts, left on cables or carefully draped on gurneys.

A man stands in the middle of the metal and poliblast fiber web, swaying back and forth. There’s an insulated radio on a desk next to a heavy thermos and a spare pair of gloves. Frost inches up the side of the thermos, threatening to take the top, which still holds enough heat to melt it back, a losing battle against the natural entropy of the universe. Hopefully, within the hour, the man will take his break and rescue the thermos from the cold, drink his soup before it becomes a block of ice, but he’s so easily distracted. It isn’t the first time he has to sit out on the pavement with his thermos tucked into his heavy coat, the synthetic fur billowed up around his ears looking all like some poor imitation of a Wookie.

This one. This one will do.

As the man sniffles and scratches one gloved hand under his arm, he hears a slow pop and hiss and assumes its his heater system. He’s so close to putting the final detail on this new eye. Something marvelous this time. The slight gold flecks shine against the electrifine tool, minute details stitched along the pupil. Better eyesight. Incredible eyesight. Beautiful—

It’s getting colder.

Storm.

But, no, that’s outside, and he’s inside the depot and the man looks up suddenly just before a foot is planted in his chest and shoves him back into a wall of perfectly articulated pieces for the Salpam Regiment shipment. He grunts, shocked more by the sharp items in his back than by the person themselves. The flash of ankle…but it’s so cold. They should be freezing. The frost creeping up such pale skin shows they _are_ freezing, but whomever…whatever….

And then there’s a hand reaching out behind him and unclips the heating coil from his back. What little residual heat trapped under his coat is already starting to bleed away and he shivers quickly, clenching his teeth to keep them from clacking.

“These are yours?” someone asks. The one in the center. Nexus Prince line. Can always tell with that little ring around their eyes, the stern set of their mouth. Soldiers. Beautiful things, really, even when like this. And then man gasps as he shakily nods his head, not even certain what he’s agreeing to.

“I-I…I. I made…your eyes,” he says weakly.

The Prince smiles and it does not look like something they are entirely practiced at, but it still warms something on their face. Or, perhaps he is so desperate for warmth that he clings to any last hope. There are crystals on his skin, too. So fast. So cold.

“And you make these for Morningstar?”

“Morningstar?” It’s not meant to be a question, but he can’t help himself. There’s three more in the room and one of them, with filthy pale hair and muck oozing down his brow, picks up the piece that he was working on. He holds the eyeball delicately between his fingers, turning it over and over. Perhaps there is jealousy there, the way he stares at it with is black-out eyes. Underground unit. A digger, most likely. Minor…solider…something. It’s so hard to think. “Yes. Yes, but I—”

“And do you know how to reach Morningstar?”

“W-W-Wuh. W-Why would y—”

“So slips the sands of time,” they answered simply with a sigh, their breath puffing up around them, going dead cold before it can reach him. “Why should we get to burn brighter than you, and never reach a decade, hmm? You know. Tell us how to reach Morningstar.”

There’s a squelch, then something crunching, like a bite of snow. The eyeball pops and freezes against the other replicant’s hand. He doesn’t even know how to look horrified or guilty or to despair. If anything, a flash of a smile. A shadow of a shadow of happiness, practiced but who’s to say if it can really be felt. If these things can claim to have emotions or a soul.

Which strikes an idea in him, popping along the last electric lines of neurons. He won’t get out. He already feels his hands freezing into dead lumps of ice and reaches uselessly into his pocket. Pulls out a coin. It falls heavily to the floor.

“S-Suh. Suh. B-bast.”

Beelzebub picks up the St. Sebastian token, turning it over. And smiles.

“How do we find him?”

**O**

It was far from comfort, returning to the precinct. Aziraphale was never one to truly fit in with the unit. Several blade runners walk out of the Metatron’s office. One of them, Officer Uriel, spots him and her eyes glow with both anger and confusion before she notes Gabriel and gets knocked into by one of her partners. Aziraphale feels the need to wave at them, even if they are not at all on friendly terms. She once sucker punched him in an alley when he, as she saw it, chose the wrong side and put them in jeopardy.

“Did you get new implants?” Aziraphale asks, getting dragged into the office. He will never admit that the innocuous question, while gesturing at his face to point at the new golden marks she has tattooed on her cheeks, is to rile her up. It is never an intentional insult, but, deep down, they both know.

“Don’t bother,” the other man says, pushing on Officer Uriel’s arm, guiding her away from the office. When he speaks, Sandalphon shows off a glint of something slicing his two front teeth. It seems that, whatever is going on, it pays this blade runner crew well enough.

“Ta-ta!” Aziraphale calls after them, waving his fingers, unable to stop himself, really.

“Are you done?” Gabriel asks, either polite enough not to say anything about Aziraphale’s ruse, or stupid enough not to notice it. Aziraphale has only survived this long by realizing Gabriel is certainly not that stupid.

“Yes, quite. Sorry.”

The Metatron has a spacious office, stretched long with three rows of desk that are plotted out beside him. It gives the illusion, with the bright walls and hazy yellow windows, of going on and on forever, even if he formally only takes up the first desk. He looks up, his dark wrinkled eyes narrowing in on Aziraphale, and he smiles.

“There they are,” he says, rising to his feet, his arms outstretched. “My two best agents, working together again.”

“Together?”

The Metatron motions to the chairs in front of his desk and is already fixing a projection cube to share with them. Gabriel falls into the chair next to Aziraphale, all but putting his feet up on the desk. He doesn’t seem the type, never was, but it is the ease with which he does everything, the complete control over his limbs that suggests he could do it quite easily and get away with it.

“I’m sorry, but did you say, ‘together?’ I wasn’t sure we—”

“Did he get a chance to brief you about Abel?”

“Abel?” Aziraphale does not very much like being ignored. Surely nobody truly likes being ignored, not by someone important and not for their job, though there must be people out there that do. Still, he has learned to sit on his hands and bite his lips shut for his own sake. He settles, his legs pressed tightly together, sitting with a very straight back, and holds his hands neatly in his lap. “I’m afraid we didn’t get a chance—”

“Blade Runner,” the Metatron continues. Aziraphale wonders if he’s projecting enough. Or if he’s begun to turn invisible. “Field agent, like you were. Doing an investigation over at Morningstar Corp.”

The cube brightens in the little matrix above the Metatron’s desk and Agent Abel Cain’s face comes together, rotating slightly in the hologram.

“Was he part of the—”

“Waste Management division,” the Metatron says. Aziraphale looks up and fights to keep his brows from furrowing. “One of the sister companies. Flightway or Fleetway or Fightway. Something like that.”

“FlightWhim Retrieval,” Gabriel supplies to Aziraphale in a low voice, like they might even be friends sharing a secret joke at their boss’s expense. Aziraphale practically gapes at him for that shred of detail, but Gabriel is nonplussed, still watching their superior.

“Eric LePorid, so the file says.” The Metatron swipes the cube, which instantly displays a new face. A young man, perhaps in his late twenties, with a dark complexion and cosmetically enhanced eyes. He stares blankly from the cube, likely his intro ID portrait for FlightWhim Retrieval. “Under investigation by Abel sixteen hours ago. Abel, who was found dead cold in an office at the waste facility not ten hours ago. We were able to pull out the diagnostics from his Voigt-Kampf. Luckily, it had not been damaged during the encounter, as it appears LePorid here made a daring escape out a window. Fifty stories up, mind you.”

Which really only meant one thing.

“Do we know which generation he is?” Aziraphale asks, expecting to be ignored once more.

“I ran his profile after we got the diagnostic out.” A second screen bloomed out of the first one, a mushroom cloud of information beginning to form in front of them, with all the records available on the young replicant. “Nexus 5, thank god. Low level soldier, expendable types, you know. They used to run duplicates of his base model to fill the ships. That’s why I assume he got that work done with the makeup and everything. Blend in a little better.”

“He’s not the leader,” Gabriel says simply, crossing his arms and practically glaring at Mr. LePorid’s portrait. “Can’t be. I’ve retired a few of these and they…aren’t it.”

“They aren’t.”

The Metatron’s chair squeaks as he leans back, grabbing the latch to a desk drawer and yanking it open, the rollers clacking noisily along the tracks. Everything left is clunky, sturdy things, the only things that survive anymore. Aziraphale himself often feels like one of those sturdy things, the only way to survive.

Three plastic sheets spill out of a folder, each with a green tint across the code along the bottom. Standard unit encryption. There were tiny pixelated pictures included on each, but the Metatron thumbed them out and slotted them into a point on his desk like punch cards, until their data files popped up between them, dividing the desk further.

“The one you’re looking for, Gabriel, is our Nexus Prince line.” The Metatron highlighted one of the files. The replicant had a clean, deceivingly impish face. Soft angles, sharp eyes. Their record expanded to the side and just continued scrolling, detailing all of their successes in their regimented career, and the current list of crimes associated with the need to retire them. “They took the name Beelzebub, apparently. Serves us right a demon would hijack a personal transport from Hijan.”

The Metatron chuckles, despite the knowledge of the horrors Beelzebub Prince and their team inflicted on the people trying to start their new lives up on the colonies. Despite their wealth, obscene or not, lives were still lost. And even as fast as the list of crimes were scrolling, the two Blade Runners did not miss numerous body counts, details of arson, and even venting into space. The idea of a swarm of flies picking a carcass clean were not far off.

“They have two more with them. Hastur, another Nexus, soldier model, and a third civilian companion brand that goes by Ligur.”

Two more profiles came up next to Beelzebub Prince. Aziraphale finds a terrible need to clean his face when looking at Hastur’s picture. One has to assume this was fresh off assembly, before they were shipped off-planet, but somehow Hastur arrived filthy, as though he had already seen hundreds of hours of combat. Decomposing. That’s it. It reminds Aziraphale of decomposition.

“Four different high-profile replicants?” Aziraphale asks at last, staring at the data packages, memorizing ID numbers, the model numbers, the details of each of their service and trusts that Gabriel is doing the same. “And you’ve only brought on myself? Sir. This does seem outside our—”

“I know,” the Metatron says quickly, and slices his hand through the air. “Trust me, I know. Do you really think I want to pull you in?”

Aziraphale frowns and sinks back. His fault for bringing it up, but he still feels hurt at the accusation that Aziraphale is not at all worth it.

“But I have word from Morningstar Corp that this needs to be dealt with _quickly_ and _quietly._ I can’t have someone with Abel’s profile going up against these two again. I need tried and true officers and despite your last blunder,” he says pointedly, staring firmly at Aziraphale, “your record speaks for itself. I don’t need a pencil-pushing officer who runs through the scripts. I need a Blade Runner.”

There is a large, firm hand on his shoulder and Aziraphale startles, looking up as Gabriel looks down, a rare form of camaraderie between them. It cannot be missed the way the light behind him highlights him in a soft glow. It feels like a hand across a deep gorge, a bridge forming between two brothers once more.

“You can’t ignore the boon from the paycheck bonus,” Gabriel adds with a crinkly smile.

Aziraphale huffs. He does not like being reminded of his blatant disgrace and subsequent monetary…failure, for lack of a better word.

“No, I suppose it can’t,” Aziraphale answers flatly and rolls his shoulder away from Gabriel.

“20k bonus for each successful retirement,” the Metatron says and swipes away all the screens. “Upon verified confirm.”

“Of course,” Aziraphale says, and swallows the resigned sigh that sits so firmly in his chest. “Thank you.”

The Metatron claps his hands and stands, passing the Nexus Prince file to Gabriel. He disappears around one of the tall file cabinets in the office and rummages, leaving Aziraphale alone with his former partner. Superior, actually, with how the rank and file go, though they had once done their work side-by-side and enjoyed the company of it all. At the time, even the other officers pulled Aziraphale into their fold, but the group was always distant by nature, pristine by nature. Haughty. Morally overbearing.

The worst.

“I’ve never seen a Prince line before,” Gabriel says. “Do you suppose we should go have a chat with Mr. Morningstar himself?”

“We’ll need an appointment, surely,” says Aziraphale and finds he’s leaning in closer to peek over Gabriel’s shoulder instead of picking up his own copy. Gabriel doesn’t seem to mind. He tilts the screen for Aziraphale, the two of them staring at Beelzebub’s floating head.

“You’ll have one,” the Metatron announces as he finds whatever it is he was searching for and returns, setting something hard and heavy on the desk. “I called ahead. Made arrangements. You’re welcome.”

“Oh.”

“And you’ll be needing this again.” The Metatron turns the case around. There’s a scratch near the locking mechanism, the very one that Aziraphale had knifed into the thing nearly five years ago. “I’ve done you the favor of replacing the old model. It’s lighter.”

Aziraphale tugs the case towards him and is surprised. Indeed it is considerably lighter. He could easily carry it around like a very normal briefcase all day and wouldn’t wind up with a winched shoulder for his efforts.

“I trust you still have your firearm?”

“Oh? Oh, yes. Um.” They all know the answer to that, and it is rude that the Metatron asks, simply to put Aziraphale down. He knows that must be the case. The story is not infamous, but there are people who know. Two. There are two people who know and Aziraphale isn’t entirely sure if they’re just hoping he had had a change of heart and went back to retrieve it. “Um, sadly…that’s not…quite….”

The Metatron rolls his eyes and disappears once more.

Gabriel shakes his head and sighs, rolling his shoulder a bit, a silent and invisible wall going back up between them at the reminder of Aziraphale’s failed case.

By the time their formalities have run their course and Aziraphale is issued another standard Blade Runner double pistol – the grip of it is familiar, uncomfortably so, and the weight evens out something that has been off-kilter for a while. He is loathed to admit…it just fits. He’s certain his old holster is still in his flat, but he buckles on the one given to him now, as a replacement. All of it a replacement. A tell that he should have been replaced, too, but sometimes you cannot beat the real deal, blood and guts and all.

“I’m driving,” Gabriel announces as they stalk back out into the now very wet evening, the rain turning to big fluffy snow that will melt and become grey slush on the pavement. Aziraphale’s feet are cold at the thought of it and he tugs his creamy long coat up higher, shivering against his collar. Gabriel’s is buttoned up around his mouth again, the long sharp line of it all, the impeccable silver fabric. He moves with certainty. He speaks with authority. And Aziraphale follows because he feels he has no choice in the matter.

“Do you think he’s still upset with me?” Aziraphale asks delicately as he settles in the passenger seat of the military hover car. The console stretches into the arm rest beside them, everything clean, wiped down. Immaculate. It looks like Gabriel’s even installed the new ICARUS for their drone. “I mean, it’s been so long. I can’t understand why—”

“You can,” Gabriel says, punching up the flight maps to navigate their way to Morningstar Corp. “You’re smarter than that, Aziraphale.”

It is hardly a slap in the face, though Aziraphale certainly reacts like it is. He shrinks a bit, folding his hands in his lap, and turns his face down as Gabriel flips over toggles and starts the engines, a low pulse just beneath them. As they lift off, Aziraphale fishes in his pockets, no doubt to get his phone out and double check their requirements for the meeting, when he finds a slip of paper. A rare receipt. He wriggles a bit in the seat, getting comfortable, Gabriel piloting them quietly through the city, and begins to fold the paper, over and over, in halves, in triangles, in twisting corners. Careful. Careful. So careful.


End file.
